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| Photos courtesy of Libie. |
Monday, December 10, 2012
Happy Holidays!
It is my last day in Ho Chi Minh City before traveling to Cambodia and Thailand. In the past week, HCMC has been covered with holiday decorations that almost rival the decorations in NYC. It is strange to see all these decorations when it's 90 degrees outside, but it makes me excited to get home and celebrate with my family. Last week Tom, Libie, and I attended a hotel holiday party, complete with cookies, wine, and caroling. Wherever you are, Happy Holidays!
Sunday, December 9, 2012
ISP Presentations - The End is Near
Tomorrow is the very last day of my program. I cannot believe how fast it has gone by. On December 7, my entire class reunited in Ho Chi Minh City at the guest house we had stayed at during our first two weeks in Vietnam. The last time we were at the guest house we were just getting to know each other, figuring out how to cross the streets successfully, and adjusting to life in Vietnam. The guest house hadn't changed a bit, but each of us are a little different than when we first arrived. Not only are our chopstick skills impeccable, but we have learned how to live for a month on our own in a different country. I have met a very diverse group of people: Vietnamese students, backpackers from the UK and New Zealand, farmers in the Mekong River Delta, ethnic minority groups in Sapa, chefs in Hue, professors from around the country, and of course the students on my program. Every person I have met around Vietnam has given me insight into different aspects of Vietnamese culture and American culture as well.
On December, 8 my class went back to the University of Economics to present our ISPs. Each student gave a twenty-thirty minute powerpoint presentation about their project. Vietnamese students, university professors, people we had met throughout the semester, some host families, and a group of around eight representatives from SIT came to see our presentations. The SIT representatives each worked in different regions around the U.S. Each year they go to one program to see how it is run and what types of projects the students are able to do so they can better promote it at different colleges.
All of the studies were very unique. Ethan presented about the success rate of an NGO called "Village of Hope" that provides vocational training to underprivileged students. Tom discussed sustainable tourism in Hue, Hoi An, and Da Nang. Eliza studied the sources from which Hue high school students derive their knowledge about sex. Anna studied diabetes in Vietnam and was able to assist many doctors with their research. Libie studied the autism and talked with parents about the diagnostic process in Vietnam. Sarah learned about the organic farming movement in Hanoi. Nancy talked about how Vietnamese that live overseas are treated differently than Vietnamese living in Vietnam. Jenny spoke about the difficulties Vietnamese university students have in finding a job after school. Molly presented about the influence of fortune telling in the lives of Vietnamese people. Instead of presenting a powerpoint, Ben played a forty minute video he had made about Zen Buddhism. For his ISP, he spent the month living with Buddhist monks in a monastery in Da Lat. My project was called, "Effects of Tourism and Globalization on the Commercialization of Hue Royal Cuisine".
It is strange to think that after spending 24/7 with a group of people that we will soon be leaving each other to go back home. The majority of our group is going to keep traveling around different countries in Asia and then make it back to the U.S. by Christmas. I am going to travel with Sarah, Jenny, and Anna to Angkor Wat in Cambodia and Bangkok and Chiang Mai in Thailand then come back to Ho Chi Minh City for a few days.
I really could not be happier that I chose SIT Vietnam. Through most study abroad programs students say in one place. They may have the opportunity to read about the different geographical landscapes of the country they are visiting, hear stories about the people, or see photos of different foods, but nothing can beat experiencing all this first-hand.
On December, 8 my class went back to the University of Economics to present our ISPs. Each student gave a twenty-thirty minute powerpoint presentation about their project. Vietnamese students, university professors, people we had met throughout the semester, some host families, and a group of around eight representatives from SIT came to see our presentations. The SIT representatives each worked in different regions around the U.S. Each year they go to one program to see how it is run and what types of projects the students are able to do so they can better promote it at different colleges.
All of the studies were very unique. Ethan presented about the success rate of an NGO called "Village of Hope" that provides vocational training to underprivileged students. Tom discussed sustainable tourism in Hue, Hoi An, and Da Nang. Eliza studied the sources from which Hue high school students derive their knowledge about sex. Anna studied diabetes in Vietnam and was able to assist many doctors with their research. Libie studied the autism and talked with parents about the diagnostic process in Vietnam. Sarah learned about the organic farming movement in Hanoi. Nancy talked about how Vietnamese that live overseas are treated differently than Vietnamese living in Vietnam. Jenny spoke about the difficulties Vietnamese university students have in finding a job after school. Molly presented about the influence of fortune telling in the lives of Vietnamese people. Instead of presenting a powerpoint, Ben played a forty minute video he had made about Zen Buddhism. For his ISP, he spent the month living with Buddhist monks in a monastery in Da Lat. My project was called, "Effects of Tourism and Globalization on the Commercialization of Hue Royal Cuisine".
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| Back row: Ben, Sarah, Tom, Eliza, Ethan Front Row: Jenny, Molly, Nancy, Me, Libie, Anna Photo Courtesy of Libie |
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| The whole class with our academic director, Co Thanh, and assistant director, Vy on the left. |
It is strange to think that after spending 24/7 with a group of people that we will soon be leaving each other to go back home. The majority of our group is going to keep traveling around different countries in Asia and then make it back to the U.S. by Christmas. I am going to travel with Sarah, Jenny, and Anna to Angkor Wat in Cambodia and Bangkok and Chiang Mai in Thailand then come back to Ho Chi Minh City for a few days.
I really could not be happier that I chose SIT Vietnam. Through most study abroad programs students say in one place. They may have the opportunity to read about the different geographical landscapes of the country they are visiting, hear stories about the people, or see photos of different foods, but nothing can beat experiencing all this first-hand.
Ancient Hue Restaurant and Gallery
During my ISP, I was lucky enough to be able to spend time at Ancient Hue Restaurant and Gallery. The restaurant was built in 2005 to showcase the royal cuisine. The owner of Ancient Hue also wanted a place to preserve and display traditional Hue art and architecture so traditional wooden houses were constructed next to the restaurant. Chefs at Ancient Hue use modern cooking techniques, like gas stoves, and a variety of ingredients to prepare their version of the royal cuisine for customers. They also incorporate traditional aspects of the royal cuisine such as decorative carvings to preserve the food’s royal appearance.
The fixed menu lists seven dishes: three appetizers, one main dish, two side dishes, and a dessert. On November 21, the menu included vegetable soup, deep fried bean curd, rice paper rolls with grilled pork, royal stewed red snapper in ginger sauce, sauteed bok choy with oyster sauce, steamed rice, and sweet taro mousse with coconut ice cream. The fried bean curd was plated with a carving of a vase of flowers, the rice paper rolls had a carrot flower, and the red snapper was served with a fish carved from pumpkin on a piece of ginger. The waitresses cleared the plates after each course and swiftly replaced them with the next dish.
Tuyet - Ancient Hue Carver
It is 11:00 a.m. and two chefs are busy in the kitchen slicing squares of pale yellow homemade bean curd, which is on today’s menu. One woman is sitting alone at a metal table off to the side of the kitchen, surrounded by an assortment of small knives and root vegetables. Below the table is a bowl filled with three orange goldfish, carved from a pumpkin, that look like they are swimming. This woman is the carver. Tuyet is one of two chefs at Ancient Hue that specializes in carving decorations to adorn the plates of guests.
Three years ago, when she was 21 years old, Tuyet learned how to carve from another chef at Ancient Hue Restaurant. She occasionally still uses reference books like, The Complete Practical Book of Fruit Art Carving, which gives instructions on how to carve different fruits, but mostly does everything from memory. Each dish has a specific plating element and the name of the dish often corresponds with the decoration attached, like phoenix salad. The majority of tour groups and customers order from pre-set menus so the chefs and carvers know exactly what to prepare for the day. Many of the dishes feature the same basic decorations, like flowers carved from carrots, so they can be reused on dishes later in the day. The decorations are meant to be viewed, not eaten, and are almost all disposed of the same day they are created.
In front of Tuyet is a white turnip carved in the shape of the head of a bird. The beak is crafted from an orange carrot and black peppercorns adorn the eyes. Tuyet works quickly, switching tools to carve feathers down the phoenix’s neck. Each day she works eight-hour shifts, carving the entire time. In one day she usually makes twenty small and two big carvings. The large carvings, like the phoenix, can take around one and a half hours. She uses white turnips, carrots, melons, green papayas, pumpkins, tomatoes, and cucumbers to carve animals like dragons, crabs, fish, shrimp, and swans. She also carves flowers and famous architecture from Hue like bridges, pagodas, and dragon boats.
At the end of each customer’s meal, Tuyet goes to the guests’ table with a carrot, turnip, and some small knives. She starts by carving the carrot while the guests try to guess what it will be. In a matter of seconds an orange prawn appears. She then demonstrates how to make a rose out of the turnip to the delight of the customers who “ooo” and “ahhhh”, taking out their cameras to record the food art.
Tham - Ancient Hue Head Chef
Tham was twelve years old when she became interested in cooking. She learned how to prepare some Hue traditional recipes, like bun bo Hue (beef noodle soup) from her mother. Tham was born in Hue, but completed a three-year cooking course in Hanoi after finishing high school. Now at age 47, she has worked for a total of 27 years in the restaurant industry. When I interviewed her, she was in her third month at Ancient Hue Restaurant.
As head chef, she decides what will be on the menu and how it is plated. In the past, the menu was more dependent upon the season since chefs had to grow their own ingredients. She remarked that with the presence of supermarkets and outdoor markets it is much more convenient to purchase out-of-season ingredients. Also, it is easier to buy imported ingredients, like alcohol and cheese. She said tourism has made the royal cuisine more famous, though it is not exactly the same as it was during the time of the Nguyen Dynasty, which can be attributed to the variety of ingredients that were not available during the emperors’ reign. Recently available products such as chicken powder and MSG enhance and add a different flavor to the royal cuisine dishes that could not have been achieved before.
To plate each dish, she considers the meaning of each dish and how to symbolize the stories on the plate. The phoenix and dragon represent the queen and king respectively and are a typical garnish used to distinguish the royal cuisine from common food.
Huong - Ancient Hue Assistant Chef
Huong sits at a small table outside the kitchen peeling a large bowl of shallots. She has worked for 12 years in the culinary field after her initial career as a photographer. She did not go to university, but learned all her cooking knowledge from working in restaurants. Cooking at Ancient Hue, Huong remarked that the menu is catered to tourists. The chefs use of ingredients distinguishes the tourist food from the dishes cooked for local Hue people. Even though the chefs are preparing royal cuisine the food is still cooked with less chili and spice at the restaurant than what they would cook if they were home. When cooking, Huong looks at recipes for the list of ingredients, but estimates and tastes the dish to decide on the correct proportions.
Inside the Dining Room
The entire experience that customers have at Ancient Hue is meant to transport them back to the time of the Nguyen Dynasty, with modern conveniences to make customers more comfortable. The waitresses wear red and gold ao dai’s, the traditional Vietnamese dress, which symbolize the colors of the royal family. Each dining room is adorned with plush upholstered chairs and hand crafted wooden tables. The air conditioner is on high as easy listening music plays in the background. Each customer who orders from the fixed menu is presented with a paper menu, outlining the order of the dishes written in Vietnamese and English. In the large a la carte menu, the menu prices are written in U.S. dollars, catering to tourists. The restaurant also accepts payment by U.S. dollars, Vietnamese dong, and the Euro.
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| Fried Bean Curd |
None of the dishes were very spicy or over seasoned. Instead, each of the ingredients were balanced so that they complemented and enhanced the flavor of the entire dish. The fried bean curd had a crispy breading surrounding the silky smooth filling. It was paired with a tangy dipping sauce to offset the mellow flavor of the bean curd. The ginger sauce added a peppery, sweet taste to the red snapper. The bok choy added a contrasting crisp texture to that of the soft fish and the fresh flavor prevented the ginger sauce from overwhelming the dish. For dessert, the taro mousse had a texture similar to pudding. The taro mousse was bitter, but the scoop of cold coconut ice cream on top added just the right amount of sweetness to balance the dessert’s flavors. During the meal, the front of house manager came around to make sure everything was going smoothly and at the end Tuyet came to demonstrate her carving skills. It was a meal fit for an emperor.
Becoming a Celebrity During ISP - Almost
Becoming a celebrity in Vietnam is goal that my friends and I have been joking about accomplishing since our arrival. We all stick out as foreigners and Vietnamese people are really interested, and not shy, about coming up to us, asking about the U.S. and asking to take a photo. Back when Eliza and I did our dance routine with members of the English Club from Hoa Sen University (that feels like a very long time ago), we experienced what it must feel like to be a celebrity when we were bombarded by students asking to take photos with us. We kidded that we were all over facebook in Vietnam. A week later, my friends and I were walking to dinner when we came upon a film crew and a group of dancers in a park. We asked around and figured out they were filming a commercial for some milk or yogurt product and dancing Gangnam Style. Long story short, we asked if we could be in it and took our places in the middle. They filmed us once (I think just to get us to leave). I'm pretty sure they didn't use that take, but we laughed about how funny it would be if we ended up on Vietnamese TV. Ironically, it actually ended up happening.
During the second week when I was in Hue, my ISP advisor, Ms. Huy, told me to come to her home on Sunday. She told me we would be filmed cooking together for an upcoming TV documentary about her career as a chef and how she is preserving the Hue traditional cuisine. Ms. Huy use to be a teacher, but then decided to come back to Hue and pursue a career in cooking. She has trained in France and is an honor member of the French National Academy of Cuisine. She's an incredible woman and currently has three full-time jobs: teaching culinary school students, cooking, and writing books and poems. Ms. Huy also is a judge for important cooking competitions.
The day of the filming I really did not know what to expect. I took a cab from my hotel and arrived at Ms. Huy's door at 8:00 a.m. The film crew, consisting of two camera men and one woman, who conducted the interviews, arrived around 8:15. First, they filmed Ms. Huy and I walking through the outdoor market near her house. She talked about the products, describing where they came from and what they could be used to make. We bought some ingredients like carrots, green figs, and ground pork and walked back to her house to prepare two dishes: warm fig salad and spring rolls.
Around this time, some of her culinary students, who were all in their early to mid twenties, started arriving. It was clear that they regarded Ms. Huy as a culinary god. One of the students told me that Ms. Huy was their idol and that they really enjoyed learning from her. The students helped us chop the vegetables and prepare the dishes. To make the fig salad, the green figs first had to be boiled and then peeled. The figs here do not really resemble the ones sold in the US. In Vietnam, they are bigger and have less seeds. Once boiled, they have a grayish color and almost remind me of an artichoke heart. The figs were then chopped and cooked with sesame seeds, shallots, and a little bit of oil over the stove.
Once the fig dish was moved to a serving bowl and garnished with a bright red flower-shaped chili, we started to make spring rolls. The ground pork was mixed with sliced carrots, turnips, garlic, cut up glass noodles, green onions, shallots, chili, sugar, salt, pepper, and a few other spices. Ms. Huy then showed me how to use mung bean paper to wrap the spring rolls. After they were wrapped, we fried the spring rolls two times; the first time to cook the meat and the second time to brown the outside.
The TV crew filmed the cooking demonstration then asked me to answer a few questions about what I thought of Hue food and Ms. Huy. After the interview, the crew drove Ms. Huy and I to a park near the Perfume River where we were instructed to walk around arm and arm and engage in conversation. I really wonder what all the people in the park were thinking when they saw Ms. Huy strolling along with a very blond foreigner trailed by a film crew. When they got a sufficient amount of footage, the crew drove us back to her home where they interviewed some of her students before packing up their equipment.
Back at Ms. Huy's we finally got to eat the food we had prepared with her students, which was delicious.
Here is the documentary video clip about Ms. Huy, which aired on November 28 in Vietnam. http://vtvhue.vn/chuyen-muc/
During the second week when I was in Hue, my ISP advisor, Ms. Huy, told me to come to her home on Sunday. She told me we would be filmed cooking together for an upcoming TV documentary about her career as a chef and how she is preserving the Hue traditional cuisine. Ms. Huy use to be a teacher, but then decided to come back to Hue and pursue a career in cooking. She has trained in France and is an honor member of the French National Academy of Cuisine. She's an incredible woman and currently has three full-time jobs: teaching culinary school students, cooking, and writing books and poems. Ms. Huy also is a judge for important cooking competitions.
The day of the filming I really did not know what to expect. I took a cab from my hotel and arrived at Ms. Huy's door at 8:00 a.m. The film crew, consisting of two camera men and one woman, who conducted the interviews, arrived around 8:15. First, they filmed Ms. Huy and I walking through the outdoor market near her house. She talked about the products, describing where they came from and what they could be used to make. We bought some ingredients like carrots, green figs, and ground pork and walked back to her house to prepare two dishes: warm fig salad and spring rolls.
Around this time, some of her culinary students, who were all in their early to mid twenties, started arriving. It was clear that they regarded Ms. Huy as a culinary god. One of the students told me that Ms. Huy was their idol and that they really enjoyed learning from her. The students helped us chop the vegetables and prepare the dishes. To make the fig salad, the green figs first had to be boiled and then peeled. The figs here do not really resemble the ones sold in the US. In Vietnam, they are bigger and have less seeds. Once boiled, they have a grayish color and almost remind me of an artichoke heart. The figs were then chopped and cooked with sesame seeds, shallots, and a little bit of oil over the stove.
Once the fig dish was moved to a serving bowl and garnished with a bright red flower-shaped chili, we started to make spring rolls. The ground pork was mixed with sliced carrots, turnips, garlic, cut up glass noodles, green onions, shallots, chili, sugar, salt, pepper, and a few other spices. Ms. Huy then showed me how to use mung bean paper to wrap the spring rolls. After they were wrapped, we fried the spring rolls two times; the first time to cook the meat and the second time to brown the outside.
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| Ms. Huy, her students, and me. |
Back at Ms. Huy's we finally got to eat the food we had prepared with her students, which was delicious.
Here is the documentary video clip about Ms. Huy, which aired on November 28 in Vietnam. http://vtvhue.vn/chuyen-muc/
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